For our one year anniversary, Nick and I headed out to Colorado. Our first stop was Idaho Springs. Boy was that a trip. The hot springs "resort" was very scary and it was under construction. We went ahead and decided to take a dip since we had made the drive, but it was not quite the neat hot springs experience I had in mind. Later when I told my aunt and uncle about it, they made a face and told us they had been there before and would not have recommended the place. Next time, we'll be sure to run our ideas by them!
We stopped in to visit my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Jeff at their cabin near Estes Park, where we were able to get our dog fix and play with their puppy Cousteau. We also took a rather long hike in Rocky Mountain National Park, starting out in t-shirts and ending in coats, hats and gloves as we hiked up to snowy ground. We had a slight scare on the way back down, as the sun began to set and we thought might be lost; however, we ran into some other hikers who confirmed we were heading the right way. We did not see any mountain lions, which I was happy about. We did however see some elk chilling by the road on our way out of the park!
Along the way, we also made stops at the University of Colorado at Boulder (what a cool place to go to college!), Red Rocks Park, Boulder Falls, (it sounded cooler than it ended up being...you'll see pics of us standing in front of a rather small waterfall) and Waterton Canyon. I really wanted to see some bighorn sheep, and we were told we might see them at Waterton Canyon. In fact, as we were starting on the trail, this lady and her two kids were leaving, and they told us they had just seen a huge group of them in the middle of the trail. We were so excited! Of course, by the time we got there, they were all gone. Or the woman was lying...we'll never know. We did get to see some mountain goats high up on the side of the canyon. Again, no mountain lions, so I was glad. I kept looking over my shoulder waiting for one to pounce on me.
We both really love Colorado and think about living there a lot. We even drove up to Fort Collins to look at some houses while we were out there. Besides the the beautiful scenery, nice weather, and exciting outdoor adventure opportunities, Colorado is also a very dog friendly state, which we love. We went to a brewery in Boulder where we saw several people with their dogs sitting by their sides as they ate dinner on the patio. We were so jealous! We just think we'd miss our friends and family too much if we moved there for good. So we'll be sticking around in Indy for the time being...
Finally, we went to Elway's Steakhouse for our anniversary dinner. It was quite tasty!
Check out our other pics here.
